Chapter Text
To be immortal means to forget.
Memories do not last forever. Sentimental objects, names, and faces, it’s all doomed to fade. When faced with eternity, there has to be an acceptance that some things are just bound to be eventually left behind. It is the way of the mind, and the way of life.
Kristin has known this from the first century she lived.
She is still somewhat human, despite the way time refuses to touch her, refuses to age her heart. She has loved and then she has lost, and she knows now that in every new face she comes to meet, there will be a day where she won’t be able to recall them any longer.
To be immortal is to forget. She knows so much, and yet it will never be everything. She has met so many, and yet they will all blur into nothing. It’s an inevitable thing. A part of their existence.
Phil, and his sons-- refuse to forget.
When she meets them, she doesn’t find out about Tommy for a long while. She meets Phil first, makes a kind friendship with him that turns into a fondness. Makes an amicable impression onto his sons, gathers their trust with the warmth of her smile and the knowing safety in her eyes.
She lingers around the three of them for a touch too long, years passing so quickly, her heart not wanting to let go. She tells herself that once Phil shows the first signs of aging, then she will leave, for that is always her reminder that she cannot stay with them, cannot keep them.
But the signs do not come. The years continue on, unbroken. She notices the oddity of them, and they notice her in return. From there, it’s like a wall broken down, the fondness turned into love, the trust formed into a wholehearted faith. She is like them. They are like her.
Again, she finds that she isn’t truly alone.
She’s been alive for far longer than the three of them, and for that, she promises to keep them safe to the best of her ability. Immortals like herself come so far and few-- there’s never been one who's been around as long as her, and as such, she feels a sense of a responsibility to care for any single one that may cross her path.
These three are no different in invoking a sense of needing to protect. But they do have a space closer to her heart. They twist their fates into her life, they teach her their habits, share with her their experiences.
After many years of letting her find a place within their family, Phil sits her down one fateful night and tells her about Tommy. Their lost boy, wandering somewhere far from home.
He’s not gone, Phil would tell her, with a determined, desperate hope that never wavered, even over the centuries that would slip by. Just lost. He’s just gotten lost.
He tells her that he disappeared from home ages prior. For a while, all that could be done was assume that death had taken him, after a few decades, but then Wilbur, through sheer chance, ran into him again. Found him to be unchanged, still the same as the night he vanished into thin air. Then he ran again, disappearing just as mysteriously as before.
The sight of him there and the way he left before Wil’s eyes revived all the grief within the three of them, and turned it into a firm, unwavering resolution.
Tommy was out there. He could still come home.
Techno came across him a second time, over a century later. Their meeting was more of a frantic chase than a conversation, Phil says, emphasizing how Tommy’s panic and confusion was so vividly apparent, raising more questions than answers. He disappeared before Techno’s eyes for a second time, just like before, in an odd little flash of light. And that was that. Another reminder that he was still out there. Another bit of proof that they couldn’t get to him, not quite yet.
They have had nothing since, Phil confesses to her, on that quiet night. No glimpse of him, no accidental passes. They make their efforts for him regardless, even if he may be avoiding them with purpose. Kristin finds herself witnessing the little signs of it, the glimpses of love lingering still, their stubborn care preserving even as another century goes on, and another, and then another.
They do not forget Tommy.
She sees it in the way Wilbur seems to look for a certain someone, his gaze lighting up with hope, whenever a golden-haired, sky-eyed boy walks near. She sees Techno listening close to the occasional cackling little laugh of strangers, as if they’re a similar echo to one that he hears in his dreams. She sees Phil’s art, his drawings, his sketchbooks, his paintings. One face kept, one smile remade, over and over and over with all the devotion of a father refusing to give up on his child.
She sees how they refuse to forget, refuse to leave this loved child behind. She watches as they share their findings with her, their efforts made over the years, their search never faltering. Here is our child, lost from home, they say. He will come back in time. He will.
We will wait as long as is needed until he does. We will search for eternity until that day.
She waits with them, searches with them, gives her hand of help to where it is needed. She promises to protect him as she has for every immortal being she’s taken under her hand.
He is theirs, and so he is hers. He is family. Their lost boy.
The too-early morning slowly but surely drifts into the afternoon around them, Tommy staying curled up on the couch with his brothers.
They tell him of all the stories he’s missed, all the things they’ve gotten up to in the years and years that they’ve been apart. It’s a constant story without end, with how many years they have in their pockets, but Tommy doesn’t mind the rambling. He eats breakfast made by Phil’s hand, pancakes drizzled in honey, fresh, cold fruit piled to the side, the taste of it all being sickeningly sweet, but ever so indulgent for the moment.
He gives vague hums of response to his brothers, expressive reactions and cut-off laughs as they make their way through all that he’s missed, every great event and hectic problem. He hears of Techno’s potato war, although it was more a battle of petty, persistent competition, over anything. He hears of Wilbur accidentally running for an election, getting into trouble with the other candidate, forcing them to move lives early due to the sheer attention of it all. He hears of Techno’s winnings in a championship of sorts, of some sore loser trying to murder him after his streak of victory stretched out for too long. He hears of the several unlucky fates of Wil’s guitar, the poor instrument seeming to be doomed during one particular decade, always ending up smashed, either through getting dropped out a window or being bashed against someone’s head.
They go on and on, building off each other in every retelling. Each memory brings up something even farther back, the two of them caught in a loop of ‘remember when? Remember how- I remember this one time…’
The sweet taste of breakfast lingering in Tommy’s mouth goes a bit bitter as they go on, the stories to his ear only standing as piling proof that he was gone for all of it. He left this, he left them behind. There is something so wistful at hearing them be so alive all this time without him. Seeing their faces light up in trying to reach back into the lives they’ve lived out.
It hurts, to hear all of it, to know there was a chance that he could’ve been there, he could’ve been with them through it all. But overall, it’s more soothing than painful to be hearing their voices again like this. To have such constant back and forth noise of them speaking to him, seeing him. He wants to hear their stories forever. He thinks he loves them as much, if not more, as the night he foolishly left them behind.
Eventually, there is an instance brought up where Wil mentions an odd little detail, so casually said and hardly explained.
“-and Phil, he was off asking questions for any sightings, as per usual, so we had the house alone-”
“Sightings of what?” Tommy speaks up, the first words he’s spoken since they first sat down. Wilbur slows to a halt, hand freezing in midair from where he was gesturing. Techno lifts his head from where it rested in his palm, his elbow leaned against the back of the couch.
“The- uh.” Wilbur falters, blinking slowly, as if taking in a sudden realization. “Oh my gods.”
“What?” Tommy says, creeping worry going up his spine.
“Oh my gods!” Wilbur repeats, and it’s nothing but shock, absolutely unhelpful in letting Tommy know whether he’s just realized a bad thing or a good thing. “I forgot that since he’s- we can actually show you all the shit that we- I’m getting the laptop!” He yells, climbing off the couch and nearly stumbling to the floor in his rush. Techno snorts at the action, watching him run down the hallway with little concern.
“Show me what?!” Tommy asks, twisting around in his seat and sitting up on his knees as he looks at Techno, eyes wide in confusion. “What- is it like- is it bad?” He sputters lightly, Techno shaking his head with hands coming down on his arms.
“No, it’s nothin’ like that.” Techno reassures, pulling Tommy to sit back down, Tommy more just flopping sideways with his weight hitting Techno in the chest. “It’s just- oof-” Techno gives in response, arms wrapping around Tommy rather than pushing him off. They lean awkwardly for a second in the oddly-placed hug, and then Techno shifts around in where he sits, letting Tommy stay leaning on him, his legs lifted up on the cushions around him.
Wilbur returns quickly with the laptop in hand, a gray-colored thing with a few brightly red-colored stickers placed on the back.
“Ever heard of the wonders of the internet, child?” Wilbur asks as gives the laptop to Techno, who puts it down on the thigh of his leg and starts it up, typing in a long-winded password with all the speed of someone who has it ingrained into their heart. Tommy levels Wil with an unimpressed glare as he sits back down beside them.
“I was born in the modern era, idiot. I know what the internet is.” Tommy says, pressing the back of his head to the front of Techno’s shoulder as Techno pokes through the computer in front of them, his arms kept wrapped around Tommy. It seems kinda inconvenient to do it like this, but Tommy is not moving, and he doubts Techno is going to, either.
“Were you, now? Well, I feel that explains a bit.” Wilbur hums in reply, eyes glancing up to the ceiling in thought, fingers tapping over the fabric of the couch. “You always did speak a bit odd, back then, but it’s normal now, in these years, so…”
Tommy ignores the comment, attention more focused in the way Techno scrolls fast through a long, long list of files, like it’s second nature to him. He clicks on a specific one without hesitation, as if the motion is something he’s done a hundred times.
A few photos pop up on the screen, backed with text. Tommy’s eyes skim over the words, focus zeroing in on the title within quotations.
“The blue-eyed boy.”
Next to it, there’s an old looking image, the page of a newspaper, showing a bustling street of an older age. Tommy’s figure is put in a circle in the corner, bright red.
There’s a collection of links further down, a list of saved videos, old dates put beside them, keeping track of when they were posted, how long they were up, and when they were apparently taken down.
There’s a screenshot of an article about a faded painting, being set up in a museum for being such a well-preserved piece of history.
It shows Tommy within a frame, his eyes brilliantly blue, looking out with a thoughtful expression, hints of a smile pulling at painted lips.
Tommy jerks back from the computer like it’s snapped at him, panic instantly searing at his skin in the knee-jerk response of not letting himself be known, be seen. Technoblade steadies him with an arm on his shoulder, pulling him close, pushing the laptop off his lap for Wilbur to take away.
“What the fuck?” Tommy presses into Techno, as if trying to hide from the information he’s been given, the images he just saw. “What the fuck? That’s- where did you get that?!”
“The internet.” Wilbur responds bluntly, and at Tommy’s wide-eyed look, his expression softens. “You aren’t entirely subtle as a time-traveler, Tommy. There are remnants of you. How did you think we figured it out?”
“I don’t know, I-” Tommy shakes his head, Techno’s arm pulling tighter around him. He tucks his head under his brother’s chin, wanting to melt into this spot, wanting to disappear into his very arms. Wanting to hide away from being known. If he is known, then he can be found, and when he’s found, he’s learnt that people always try to catch him, to take him-
His hands dig tight into Techno’s shirt, eyes closing at the fuzzy memories of strangers trying to take him into a car, trying to grab for his watch. Yelling, pulling, pushing him down.
He wants to reach his fingers to his wrist. He thinks of where would be the safest place to land, where would be good enough to catch his breath, no chance of being disturbed, being caught for this impossible technology on his skin. The 1500s, maybe? That would be fine enough, as long as it’s not now, not here, not-
“It’s not that obvious, though.” Techno reassures, snapping Tommy out from his racing thoughts. “I mean, this is from us searching specifically for you, for years, knowing that you were out there. It’d be hard for anyone else to confirm your existence with such small hints scattered around.” He shrugs, fingers tracing over the back of Tommy’s spine. “They’re kinda a leap.”
“The painting is the most obvious. That was our fault, though.” Wilbur goes on, his voice calming Tommy in how kindly casual it is. “That one was Phil’s. He had to leave it behind during this one fire, it was this whole thing-” He shakes his head, waving his hands out, a passing annoyance crossing his face. He huffs, then goes on. “It ended up surviving. Got taken by some bastard who always had eyes on it. And then I guess it just- got passed along into some archives or some shit, and thus, ended up on some museum's wall.” He scrolls through the laptop in front of him, head turning down to focus on the screen. “God, Phil was so pissed when he found out it got put up on display. Me and Techno went to visit it, though. Took photos and everything. I think the selfies are on here, let me see.”
“There’s evidence of me.” Tommy focuses on the important issue on hand. He sees Wilbur pull up a photo, and it’s Techno looking up at the painting, eyes full of only a longing grief. His hair isn’t pink here. It’s brown, pulled back into a bun. He wears no makeup, wears plain, simple clothes. It’s still him. It’s vividly him, and he looks at a memory of Tommy with such love. “There’s- there’s a painting of me-” Tommy repeats, chest aching at the image before him.
“Again, Phil’s fault. Phil’s work.” Wilbur reminds, and then he holds up a finger. “Although, I do blame the thief for the fact it’s just in public now-”
“I think it’s a nice spot for it.” Techno says, his chin resting down on Tommy’s shoulder as he stares at the screen, reminiscing over the day the photo was taken. “I always found it poetic. A mysterious muse amongst all the historic artworks.”
“You’re such a fucking sap.” Wilbur insults, Techno’s face splitting into a grin.
“It’s my face.” Tommy can’t help but say, fear sinking through his skin. “My face is out there.”
“It's just one thing. We’ve done what we can to hide you, if that makes you feel any better.” Wilbur insists, turning the laptop back towards him. “All those signs, those hints, the things you might’ve left behind? We’ve hidden it. You’re hidden. Well, we’ve mostly been collecting it, actually, rather than hiding it, but still- it’s not exactly out in the open.”
“Collecting?” Tommy echoes. He looks towards Wil, mouth ajar. “You- you had all this-?”
“Well, these are the digital files. It’s not terribly much.” Wilbur speaks lightly, as if he hasn’t just told Tommy that they haven’t just kept his memory, they’ve been searching for it. “We can only look into online records so far back, and not everything gets posted up for us to find.”
“What else do you have?” Tommy asks, feeling a little suffocated. It’s somewhat pleasant, somehow. His hand reaches up to squeeze at Techno’s fingers.
“Uhh, leftover objects you didn’t take along-- those are in guarded storage-- old records from where you used a false identity-” Wilbur counts off on his fingers, leaning back with the laptop balancing precariously on his knees. “Oh, Dad’s got journals. Descriptions of witnesses, and their first-hand accounts.”
“Of me?” Tommy questions.
“Of you.” Techno confirms, squeezing Tommy’s hand back. “All for you.”
“Yeah, they go back ages. There’s a written timeline we have, on paper, and on here, it’s been redone so many times- Let me see if I-” He clicks through a few things for a minute, before seeming to think otherwise. “No, no, actually- Dad! Give me one of your journals, I wanna show Tommy!” He calls, leaving the couch again, the laptop put to the side.
“A timeline?” Tommy says, Techno sitting up from behind him, his hands slipping away from Techno’s. “You have-” He twists his head to look his brother in the eye. “How long have you guys been- doing this?”
“It was after I saw you.” Techno explains simply, resting back with his hands put behind him. At Tommy's still perplexed look, he elaborates. “You were wearing the exact same clothes, Tommy. You looked exactly the same as when Wilbur had seen you, all those years ago.” He shrugs up a shoulder. “Granted, we didn’t really understand the concept of time travel then, but we thought you were maybe accidentally slipping through the ages. A curse, or something.”
“Fucking witchcraft?” Tommy says dryly.
“Hey, don’t speak ill of magic. We’ve seen things.” Techno warns, Tommy blinking in surprise. “It’s just less prominent these years. Now it’s a whole technological age, but I guess you’re used to it. This is your original era.” He reaches past Tommy for the laptop, looking through it for something specific.
“Kinda.” Tommy murmurs, trying to think of his own life, of the before. It feels like a forgotten dream, with how long ago it’s been. “I think I was born a few decades in the future.” He says, Techno looking at him with curiosity. “When…”
He suddenly jerks away in a sudden flash of pain, grunting against the push of too many memories crammed into one head. He feels a buzzing panic, some faint echo of a scream in his ears. He grabs at his wrist, heart jolting with further shock when he feels nothing but his bare skin. Nothing’s there.
…nothing will be there. Phil took his watch.
Took him home.
“Don’t push yourself.” Techno warns, Tommy falling back into his arms, feeling like he never left, all that time ago. “You’ve had a long journey home.” He speaks softly, Tommy’s eyes burning with the urge to weep for no reason.
“I don’t wanna leave.” Tommy pleads, as if there’s anything threatening any sort of separation from here. There is no threat. No duty. But the habit of his mind calls to keep moving, and he desperately fights against the instinct to keep in motion. He wishes for his brothers to keep him still, hold him down for as long as needed, until he can figure it out on his own.
“You don’t have to.” Technoblade tells him, squeezing close once again, too many times over for just one morning. Tommy can’t complain. “You’re staying here right here. Right here, Tommy. With us.”
Tommy breathes out, taking that truth and trying to replace the doubts running through his head.
Phil comes back with Wilbur a minute later, the two of them having been searching in his room. He has five books in his arms, Wilbur looking delighted that they’ve found them, delighted that Tommy is lifting his head in curious attention. Phil sets them down on the couch, leaning over the back of it, and Wil sits on the carpet beside Tommy’s legs, pulling the computer to him as Phil takes over.
“You’re lucky I’ve taken some of these out of storage recently.” Phil says, laying out the books and picking one up out of the pile, flipping through the pages for a passing moment.
“Some?” Tommy repeats, looking over the covers. They’re blank-looking things, brown and faded, a few of them stitched together to fight off the wear and tear of time.
“I’ve got about…sixty?” Phil hums, flipping through another one, the pages filled with writing, pencil and pen in a style that’s always sat a bit too cursive for Tommy’s tastes. “Give or take. A few are just precise bits, summary type notes.” He looks through a third book, then gives it to Tommy’s hands, smiling down at him with a gentle warmth. “This one is locations.”
Tommy pulls the pages open and skims over what he can read, squinting through a collection of log dates, times and places neatly lined up. “Locations of what?” Tommy murmurs, seeing the small notes in the margins. Maybe further by the edges of the town? Most prominent, night. Avoids the main roads.
“Of where you might’ve been. Of where you were once seen.”
“You stalked me?” Tommy blurts out, and Phil breaks out in a snort, Wilbur lifting his head and sputtering in an instant defense.
“It’s not-” Wil goes to say, but then he stops, pausing with a hand held in the air. His head tilts to the side. “Well.”
“I mean…” Techno shrugs.
“It was all in good intention.” Phil waves it off, gently taking the book from Tommy’s hands, putting out another for him to look at. “This one with people who came across you at some point. It was never anything too descriptive, but most were helpful with the idea of a missing child.”
Tommy ignores the funny squeeze of his heart at thinking of how Phil went about this, going from person to person, asking if they’ve ever seen his son, even in passing. Please, tell me where he went. What was he doing? He hasn’t been home in a while, and we worry.
“How the fuck did you find people who came across me?” He asks, not daring to read too hard into the words on his lap. He doesn’t think he would get much out of it.
“You tended to hover in the same area.” Phil explains, hesitating for a second, before saying- “Home. You tended to travel around home a lot. Granted, the areas changed, and it was a rather large radius, but you stayed here.”
“I-I mean, I think that’s because of the watch.” Tommy points out, looking up at Phil. “It’s not exactly teleportation across the world, it's- shifting in time. But it was made to move the wearer if the environment wasn’t suitable. It’s…” He remembers faintly, writing past equations over and over, staying up late to the smell of coffee drifting through the air.
The journal falls out of his hand as another headache hits him hard, his spine hunching over as he presses his palms onto the front of his skull. Phil’s hand touches gingerly at his hair, fingers pressing down in concerned comfort.
“Tommy?”
“S’fine.” He mutters, groaning lightly. “Too many- thinking.”
“Too many thinking.” Techno repeats, a little bit teasing.
“Shuuut the fuck up.” Tommy insults, Wilbur snickering.
“Don’t press your memory too hard. Considering what you’ve been through, and the stress of it- take it easy.” Phil’s hand lowers down to the back of his neck, a kind, familiar presence, warding off the lasting bits of pain. Tommy breathes hard, then looks back up at his father, the sight of his face more healing than any drug in the world.
He knows why he hardly strayed. Knows what he was hoping for, in staying near home.
Phil hums, thumb rubbing over Tommy’s shoulder before pulling away. “Whatever the reason it was for you staying close, it let us gather what we could. You seemed to be everywhere and yet nowhere at all. None of it made too much sense.”
“Ah, here’s the timeline. Found it.” Wilbur speaks up, pushing the laptop up on the couch, sitting up on his knees to show Tommy the screen. Tommy sees a long line scattered with dots, tiny text of specific years put beside little marks.
“See?” Wilbur says, Tommy not really seeing. He points a finger to the little diagram, explaining it out. “Each dot is a Tommy sighting. Red ones are pretty much confirmed. The others are suspected, needing more evidence. And you are allll throughout it.” He gestures to the whole of it, Tommy leaning closer and noticing that this is only a section of a certain century. He wonders how long the entire thing would be.
Wilbur leans back with his elbows sitting on the edge of the couch cushions. “Oddly enough, your descriptions never seemed to line up, though, except with certain descriptions from years and years prior, so from there, we thought maybe this was a matter of you never being seen because you were somehow slipping through the ages…”
“Slipping through the ages.” Tommy repeats, noting the wording again. He looks at Wilbur with furrowed brows. “Why do you say it like that?”
“Because it seemed like a curse.” Phil says, both Wil and Tommy turning their eyes up towards him. “We thought you were doing it by mistake, maybe you were being pulled away by some other force.”
“Other force.” Tommy repeats.
“Like, y'know. Demons and such.” Wil speaks matter-of-fact, Tommy frowning hard.
“Demons?” He says, skepticism heavily soaking into his words. “Again, with the-?” He thinks of Techno mentioning magic earlier. “But it’s not. It wasn’t that.”
“Well, we know that now.” Wil replies, gesturing at the whole of Tommy.
“Obviously. Because demons aren’t real.”
Wil’s face contorts into something judgemental, eyes squinting hard. Phil huffs from where he stands over Tommy. “You’ve traveled through time, but the concept of demon-made curses crosses the line for you?”
“Yeah, because time-travel isn’t magic, or whatever. It’s man made effort.” Tommy defends, unmoving on this fact. “I made that shit.” He points strongly at the screen, at the evidence of all his travels.
“I’d argue it’s technically magic.” Techno says from behind him, leaning into the back of the couch with his hand pressing to his cheek. “It’s magical enough. It sent you through time.”
“We are in modern ages! Magic is not a thing!” Tommy argues, Wilbur’s face going even more judgey.
“Don’t speak ill of magic.” Phil scolds, hand hitting very lightly at the side of Tommy’s shoulder. He says it with weight, as if telling off his son for being disrespectful to someone important, except it isn’t like that, because Tommy is sure that magic isn’t a thing.
“Oh my god, you’re all so old.” Tommy insults out of the blue, and Wilbur breaks out laughing, falling to the ground in his sudden amusement.
“And with our years, we know more.” Phil insists, leaning down to Tommy’s level so as to look him in the eye. “No speaking ill of magic.” He says, with a serious type of tone that has Tommy shrinking down in slight shame for the first time in- however long it’s been since he’d got told off.
“Okay.” He answers in a mumble, turning away to see Wilbur trying to catch his breath from where he’s hunched over on the carpet.
Phil huffs fondly while also witnessing Wil, and he leans forward to place a kiss on the side of Tommy’s head, before standing straight once more, stepping away from the couch. “Are you boys going to keep going through this, or shall I go pack it up?”
“You’re packing already?” Techno asks, a clear bothered emotion in the question.
“I’m getting things sorted.” Phil nods, placing his hands on his hips. “You should write up a list.”
“I don’t want to go through my stuff...” Wilbur whines, draping himself over the couch cushion in front of Tommy’s lap.
“We had so much time until the next move…” Techno bemoans, head falling backwards in despair.
“Make your lists.” Phil repeats, a hint of something stern in it. “And make a list for Tommy, as well. He’ll need things for our next spot.” He reminds, as he goes to head back to his room.
“Oh, that’s right!” Wilbur realizes, pulling the laptop to him so as to write up a list there. “You’re going to have a room, Tommy, you’re gonna have- Oh, okay, so he needs clothes, he needs bedding-”
“Paper list!” Phil calls, in something stubborn that feels like they’ve had this argument a thousand times over. Wilbur groans, faceplanting into the keyboard.
“Get with the times!” Techno yells. Tommy laughs at the both of them, a journal in his lap, feeling loved.